A lefty speaks...
1) Bear in mind that life does mean life. You never end a life sentence, and your release can be terminated at any point should the courts see fit. It's not like they'll ever be free from the threat of going straight back to prison.

2) If you're in your mid-teens, a 16-year sentence IS life. It's the whole length of your life so far.

3) While there's something attractive about keeping people in prison for the rest of their natural lives, there's also something petty, vengeful and downright ignoble about clamouring for more and more punishment just for its own sake.

4) By contrast, isn't there something admirable about an attitude that says that, if an offender pays his due, we're willing to forget the offence? And that, in the light of (3), we might be willing to let the past be even if that due hasn't been paid? (This isn't the same as saying that we should open the doors of the prisons - it's just a suggestion that, if we were as admirable as we like to think we are, that might be the attitude we'd take...)

*prepares for flaming*
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 29 Oct 2008, 9:59, Reply)